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According to innovation expert Eric von Hippel, users are often the first source of new products — and that has important implications for businesses.

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Eric von Hippel is a professor of technological innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

What if much of what you know — or think you know — about the innovation process is wrong?

That’s a question Eric von Hippel thinks many companies — and businesspeople — should consider. Von Hippel, who is a professor of technological innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management as well as a professor in MIT's Engineering Systems Division, has spent much of his professional career doing research that has led him to a radical conclusion: The traditional view of the product innovation process is flawed. In the traditional view, companies get too much credit for product innovation, according to von Hippel — and users get too little.

Surprisingly often, von Hippel argues, ideas for new or improved products come first from users who develop improvised versions to serve their own needs. Manufacturers then may discover, polish and capitalize on user innovations — particularly if those innovations begin to catch on with a group of users.

Von Hippel has decades of research to support his theory. Over the years, he and other researchers have studied user innovation in a variety of industries — and found that the proportion of users who innovate can be substantial. For example, one study, conducted by Nikolaus Franke and Sonali Shah, found that more than one — third of members of “extreme” sports clubs had developed or modified sports products for their own use, while another study, by Pamela D. Morrison and others, found that more than a quarter of library employees modified computerized library information systems. Particularly important, in von Hippel’s view, are lead users — sophisticated users who are the most likely to innovate to satisfy their own needs.

5 Comments On: The User Innovation Revolution

Thanks for this insightful piece. Some other relevant examples of tapping users worth checking out are what Bosch-http://bit.ly/qoXAQK and Adobe are doing: http://bit.ly/c7yZyc

KENT MUELLER | September 24, 2011

Very interesting in an era in which business models are often based on cash poor firms,competing in highly segmented global markets while focusing on cost containment, cash, and shareholder value at all cost. IRAD push to users and suppliers is an emerging result, but who really believes that it will actually produce “free access” to innovation? Users and vendors will factor this second tier IRAD into thier pricing or price points for doing business. This phenomenon might be another example of the downside of our migration from producer/manufacturing to consumer/service based economy. IRAD… too hard to do for many companies pressed to “just make quarterly numbers” now falling on the shoulders of the users who need innovation, and suppliers who need to remain “preferred vendors.” Very plausible!

[…] bike because the existing solutions did not fit their needs. Eric von Hippel and his colleagues discovered that “6.1% of consumers in the U.K. over the age of 18 had created or modified a product for […]

[…] your market, and you find the people who have the most extreme problems now,” said von Hippel in MIT Sloan Management Review. That leading edge of the market, of course, will vary based on your audience. For consumer […]

[…] your market, and you find the people who have the most extreme problems now,” said von Hippel in MIT Sloan Management Review. That leading edge of the market, of course, will vary based on your audience. For consumer […]